Global Issues

South Korea

• South Korea missing an estimated 200,000 women due to preference for male children.

• Source, transit, and destination country for men and women subjected to forced prostitution and forced labor.

• Some men and women from Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Colombia, Mongolia, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and other Southeast Asian countries are recruited for employment or marriage in South Korea, and subjected to forced prostitution or forced labor.

• Women who entered the country on entertainment visas trafficked for forced prostitution. Some women from less developed countries recruited for marriage with South Korean men through international marriage brokers are subjected to forced prostitution.

• Use of debt bondage was common among sex trafficking victims.

• South Korean women subjected to forced prostitution domestically and abroad in destinations including the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia.

• More than 95% of commercial sexual exploitation of children in South Korea is arranged over the Internet.

• 14% of women in South Korea report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

Advocacy:

• Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers is a coalition of sex worker groups and projects working on issues of HIV and human rights for female, male and transgender sex workers across Asia and the Pacific.

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; Stephan Klasen and Claudia Wink, University of Munich: A Turning Point in Gender Bias in Mortality? (2001); Sex Work Activists, Allies, and You